Recruitment, training, and promotions within the South African Police Service (SAPS) have been sub-optimal, with serious consequences on the professionalism and management of the SAPS, resulting in an urgent need for reform, the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) maintains.
The SAPS is on a massive recruitment drive but the model of recruiting large numbers of low skilled people – 30 000 between 2022 and 2025 – means that the proper selection of new Police recruits often did not take place. Once applicants had shown compliance with the minimum standards, selection was done on the basis of a lottery with no emphasis on selecting the best human material – with even the former requirement of a driver’s licence being dropped.
SAPS basic training has deteriorated markedly and bears little relation to the challenges new Police women and men were likely to confront in South Africa – and was in any case so dumbed down in curriculum to guarantee a “pass one pass all” system in place in training institutions, according to policing expert Gareth Newham, Head of the ISS Justice and Violence Prevention Programme.
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